Mobile home perfect for retired couple

DREAM HOME

May 08, 1994|By Donna Weaver | Donna Weaver,Contributing Writer

Tess Joyner's idea of a perfect day is spending it at her 2-year-old White Marsh mobile home. No exotic trips. No fancy restaurants. Just relaxing in her bright, spacious living room, or sitting at her breakfast bar, or lounging on her 10-by-30-foot deck.

That's it.

Oh, her husband, Roy, did pry her away from the home recently to enjoy dinner at a local restaurant. But they only stayed long enough to pick up their food.

"I asked Roy, 'Wouldn't it be nice to go home and eat it at our breakfast bar?' " Mrs. Joyner says.

And that's what they did.

A retired 67-year-old nurse, Mrs. Joyner isn't shy about her love for her home in the Sleepy Hollow Mobile Home Park.

"To me, this is our dream home," she says. "I'm the type that I put myself around my home. I say to my husband every night, 'Don't we have a beautiful home?' "

The Joyners have heard all the negative comments about mobile homes. They're small. They're ugly. They're not permanent.

But some naysayers change their minds when they see the house.

"When people come see us, they don't believe what they see," says Mr. Joyner, 63, a retired electrical inspector for Baltimore County. "It's not a traveling motor home."

A motor home is a house on wheels with a motor and a van- or truck-like chassis. They're recreational vehicles used for traveling.

A mobile home has wheels but no motor or chassis. The home has no permanent foundation and can be moved by attaching it to a trailer truck. Mobile home owners usually rent lots in mobile home parks. The Joyners pay $260 a month, which includes property taxes.

The Joyners' $48,385 home is sitting on concrete blocks and is connected to the ground by 16 steel straps attached to bolts that have been drilled into the ground. A vinyl skirt that matches the home's yellow vinyl siding hides the open space beneath the house.

Their home, on a corner lot, is twice the width of a normal mobile home. Built in a factory, the home was delivered in two sections and connected at the site. At 1,231-square-feet, the home features cathedral ceilings, skylights, plenty of windows, gas heat, three bedrooms and two baths.

"This home would have cost $110,000 if we had it built," Mr. Joyner says.

The one-story house looks like a ranch home. It has a gable roof, a bay window, black shutters, a deck and colonial revival doorway.

Inside, there's a large living room and dining room, a utility room ,, and a small kitchen with a breakfast bar and skylight. The master bedroom is on one end of the house, with a walk-in closet and a master bathroom with a garden tub and a separate shower. The other bedrooms are on the home's other end. Both have walk-in closets.

The living room is big enough for a sofa, two love seats and two chairs. A grandfather clock is in one corner; another corner, dubbed the "wedding wall," has a cabinet containing the couple's wedding memorabilia.

"This is the ideal home for young people starting out and retired couples," Mr. Joyner says. "It's low maintenance and the homes don't cost a lot. This is where we're going to stay. The next place we'll move to is the Parkwood Cemetery."